


Dusk

by Kantrips



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bittersweet, Domestic, F/M, One Shot, Romance, but heavy on the sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantrips/pseuds/Kantrips
Summary: Even at her most content, Evelyn still misses her husband.A sister fic to 'Dawn' and the original ending of 'Amidst It All'. Can be read as a standalone.
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 28
Kudos: 48





	Dusk

Evelyn groaned as she rose, dropping her bowl on the table with a clatter so she could vigorously rub her lower back. It seemed like each day greeted her with a glorious sunrise over the rolling hills and a new ache in her body. Both of these she enjoyed, in their own unique ways. After all, even the aches of a worn-out body could seem a gift when you had so firmly anticipated dying young. ‘ _You survived,’_ each newly cracking joint and stiff muscle told her. And this was her reward: gradual deterioration…and some nice sunrises. She wasn’t complaining.

Slipping the bowl into a waiting basin of clean water, Evelyn returned to the stove. There, she stirred at the leftover porridge, wondering if it was worth keeping and reheating later. It had been _years_ and she still always made too much for one person. She just couldn’t get used to it. The silence was another thing she couldn’t get used to, although when guests came to stay, she found their chatter unbearable. Evelyn chuckled and began to spoon the porridge into the scrap bucket: she really was getting cantankerous in her old age if it was apparently always too quiet or too loud in the cottage now, never quite right.

It had often been quiet in the mornings with Cullen too, especially if it had been a restless night for him. But then, they didn’t really need to speak. Their silence was different. Their silence was full of knowing looks and gentle touches and quiet hums of understanding. Evelyn scraped roughly at the base of the pot then swiped at her eyes with the corner of her apron. She wasn’t going to lose the day like this: she had too much to do.

Maybe she should get another mabari, like Mia had suggested. Evelyn had resisted the idea, but perhaps there was something to it after all. It would settle some of her worried friends and the company might be nice. Though Evelyn suspected that Mia had made the suggestion out of a misguided concern that she needed protecting with Cullen gone, forgetting that Evelyn was still capable of wiping out a group of bandits without breaking a sweat. Her body might be growing weary but her casting was indisputably as powerful as ever.

A dog was still worth considering at any rate, but not now. Evelyn drummed her fingers on the bench impatiently. What _was_ she supposed to be doing now? She was sure she’d had her day all planned before she got out of bed but the thoughts escaped her, as they often seemed to recently. Everyone used to praise her for her sharp mind, and to be reduce to this forgetful old – her herb garden! She needed to mulch it and break up some clumps of elfroot that were crowding the rest of the bed. Then she could replant them elsewhere so there would be plenty ready for when winter sniffles hit the village. Evelyn tugged at her apron string and pulled it over her head, relieved to have remembered.

Her boots were by the door. So were his. And his cloak, along with the length of rope they’d used when it was necessary to keep his ever unruly mabari at heel. Mia and Rosalie had tried to move them when they came to help before the funeral. “Leave it there,” Evelyn had said. It had been the first time she had spoken in days. Her voice had cracked as she tried to raise it loud enough to be heard over the shrieking children of different visiting well-wishers in the kitchen. “Please,” she had insisted as Rosalie’s grip had tightened on the cloak, looking towards Mia for guidance.

“Won’t it be too sad to see them?” Mia had asked gently.

“No,” Evelyn had replied with a slight smile that was met with obvious alarm by the sisters. “No, it isn’t sad at all.”

She sat on the stool by the door, pulled on her boots one by one and then, tired from even that effort, remained sitting there to rest for a minute, sweeping her eyes over the neat little cottage. It wasn’t just the boots and cloak. The book he had never got to finish was still on the table. Cullen had left it open and face down, a bad habit of his that bent the pages. Evelyn had put in a bookmark but otherwise let it be. And there was his sword still propped against the wall. Sheathed and rarely needed since they retired from the occasional bounties they took on, but he had liked to keep it oiled just in case. Evelyn always left his side of the bed free too. At Skyhold she had slept like a starfish in her quarters, but now she stayed curled on her own side, as if he might slip back into bed one night, an arm snaking around her waist, chest pressing against her back, his skin cool and smelling like the fresh night air after taking the dog out for a late stroll.

She rose and surveyed herself in the small looking glass that hung near the door, smoothing her hair and tucking some of the wiry grey strands behind her ears. For whose benefit she wasn’t sure: she was unlikely to see anyone today, or even for the rest of the week. No one would visit and she rarely walked into the village anymore. Frustratingly, the village seemed to get further away each time she made the journey and she found that so discouraging she had begun to avoid it.

Still fixed by her appearance in the mirror, she gently ran a finger along some creases around her eyes that she was certain were deeper than they had been a month ago.

“At least you didn’t live to see me get _too_ shrivelled and wrinkly,” she said to Cullen, as if he could hear. “Though you did see enough to get the gist of it I dare say. And to think I wasted so many opportunities to die young and beautiful.”

She could imagine his response. How he would have let out a longsuffering groan. How she would have seen him appear behind her in the mirror and how swiftly he would have complimented her, telling her she was more beautiful than ever. How he would have kissed her into silence when she tried to protest.

“You of course managed to look so dignified and handsome,” she continued, “Like a king in a jubilee painting. Yet every day I just look more like a walnut.” She tutted. “Yes, I am vain: don’t pretend you didn’t already know that about me.” Evelyn laughed then caught her own amused expression in the mirror and stopped abruptly.

Maybe she really should get a mabari, if only so that if anyone caught her talking to herself like this, they would think she was talking to the dog.

She hobbled out into the garden, her knees giving her so much trouble on the uneven stone steps that she had to seize at the railing to steady herself. More than likely she should be starting to use a stick when walking but her pride prevented her. Evelyn was convinced her legs wouldn’t be half so bad at this age if she hadn’t done all that running around for the Inquisition, up and down bloody mountains all day. She might have been spry as a fennec if she had only remained lounging on sofas in Ostwick Circle her whole life as anticipated.

Not that she and Cullen hadn’t done their fair share of adventuring when the cause justified it. They had been formidable together, there was no question, though they had quarrelled frequently when away from home. Evelyn had often grumbled that things were easier back when he just did what she told him.

“You disbanded the Inquisition, not me,” he would remind her in a low voice. “And I am not going to go in there and start stripping to create a diversion. It’s a terrible plan.”

“It’s a great plan. _I’d_ certainly be distracted if you did,” she argued back in a whisper.

“But you’re not the one who is _supposed_ to be distracted in this scenario,” Cullen had said, running a hand down his face.

The arguments were never serious, and in truth it was a relief for Evelyn to consult with someone, even to be firmly disagreed with on occasion. They had shared responsibility for their actions on equal footing. And they had done a lot of good, helped a lot of people, even if it was on much a smaller scale than the Inquisition. Evelyn was proud of that, though now apparently her knees were punishing her for it.

But nothing would stop her from getting out in the garden each day, not the niggling pains and not even this gloomy, drizzly weather. It was her greatest joy, apart perhaps from receiving a letter from Finn, to be amongst everything flourishing and unruly.

And to think so many people had offered, even pressured her to move away and live with them after Cullen had died. She was missing one arm, that was all, and not a complete invalid. Couldn’t they see this was her home? The only proper home she had ever had? From the bench in the orchard where they would sit in the summer and eat apricots straight from the tree, to the rope swing that let them fling themselves ungracefully into the river when the water was high, to the mantelpiece above the fire that was cluttered with souvenirs from their various adventures.

She knew her friends were being kind, but she could only scoff openly at the suggestion that she might be better off in Val Royeaux or Denerim. She scrunched her nose up at the thought. Varric had written from Kirkwall: _‘It is so damned bleak here that I feel bad inviting you. Kirkwall is suitably atmospheric for the occasion however; I will give it that. You’re welcome to come, and if you want to sweep around in your mourning blacks and wail all day and night you’ll fit right in with the landscape.’_ She had declined all offers. Even Antiva: bless Josephine and her fretting heart.

When she arrived, too late for the funeral thanks to the fickle ocean, Josephine hadn’t known what to do with Evelyn. Any outsider might have thought she was more upset by Cullen’s death than Evelyn was. And it was true that Josephine took it badly: he had been a friend and her worry for Evelyn only compounded her grief. She had fluttered around, fussing over Evelyn with this and that, coming and going with unneeded cups of water or wine, never leaving her alone for very long as if she was afraid of what might happen. Josephine seemed confused by the lack of weeping on Evelyn’s part, though her friend should have known her well enough to realise it would come, but only once she was alone.

“Well he was old, though he would never have admitted it. It was only a matter of time until he popped his clogs,” Evelyn had rationalised calmly to a horrified Josephine. “We are _all_ getting old.”

Leliana seemed to understand her better, and while she said little, just one of her piercing, thoughtful looks could be enough to nearly break her defences, forcing Evelyn to rapidly swallow back a surge of emotion. They had talked one day in the orchard, away from Josephine, Finn, Cullen’s siblings and the rambunctious flock of children that came with them.

“I always hoped –” Evelyn stopped herself and shook her head. “’Hope’ is a terrible thing to say in this context.”

“Go on,” Leliana prompted, her voice neutral, perhaps knowing that any hint of sympathy would have made Evelyn shut down the conversation in an instant.

“I had always secretly hoped he would go first. I hated the thought of leaving him alone. So this is for the best, in a way.”

“And he didn’t suffer.”

Evelyn nodded slowly, and was alarmed to see tears that she hadn’t felt coming were hitting the dry dirt between her feet. “He had suffered enough for one lifetime.” She sniffed loudly and looked up at the sky to try and stem the flow of tears, letting out a brief, cynical laugh. “For some reason I was convinced I would manage it better than he would.”

“You’re probably right,” Leliana told her, “But that won’t make it hurt any less.”

“No,” Evelyn had said simply. “I thought it would but it doesn’t. “

She remembered the day it had happened. How she had been inside, writing a letter to Finn at her desk near the fire. How she had felt Cullen lean over the back of her chair, kiss the top of her head, resting his hand on her shoulder for a moment. He had asked her to send his love before he disappeared outside. Evelyn had heard him start to chop wood a few minutes later, the familiar, methodical sound of the axe. He always prepared more than they needed, seeming to enjoy the task and often sharing the excess logs with some of the more vulnerable villagers as the winter went on.

 _‘Your father sends his love. He is out chopping more wood: I think he is anticipating the coming of an ice age even though the autumn has been pleasantly mild here. He has looked over the blueprints you sent and was very impressed. It seems he can actually visualise it all, whereas to me it is just a very imposing and clever looking series of numbers and lines. We hope to visit and see it in person soon and then I may at last begin understand what you two are talking about,’_ she wrote, smiling to herself.

Finn’s arrival into their quiet life had been welcomed with much joy, though he couldn’t have been more unexpected. Evelyn and Cullen had long since made their peace with the idea that a child may not be possible. So neither of them saw the signs, even as Evelyn had prodded her puffy cheeks and surveyed the new curve of her stomach in the bedroom mirror, wondering without enthusiasm if she should cut down on the amount of cake she was eating. The morning sickness offered them no clue either. The name was misleading given Evelyn became dizzy and nauseated unpredictably morning, noon and night. Evelyn had insisted she was fine even as this had gone on for weeks, but it tortured Cullen to see her unwell.

One evening, when Evelyn had become sick just from the smell of potatoes boiling, Cullen had picked her up and carried her all the way into the village to see the healer. He was an elderly man who was both concerned and baffled by their obliviousness. After examining Evelyn, he had sat them down side by side and carefully explained pregnancy in simple terms as if they were naive teenagers who had been up to mischief in a barn. Evelyn specifically remembered the phrase: “Actions have consequences,” being used with undisguised judgement, as if she and Cullen were not educated, in their thirties and married. It had been by far the most simultaneously ludicrous and wonderful moment of her life.

Evelyn went on writing her letter to Finn, deeply absorbed for some time, indulging herself in her customary, rambling anecdotes that she knew Finn teased her about but secretly enjoyed.

When she paused to think on some matter, tickling her own face with the feather of the quill, Evelyn realised the thudding of the axe had stopped. Cullen had given up that task sooner than expected, she recalled thinking with surprise, but perhaps he had been side-tracked by another chore, though distraction was uncharacteristic. She put down the quill, blew on the letter. Maybe someone had come to call on them, and stopped to speak to Cullen outside? She had strained to listen but could hear no voices.

She stood up hastily, the chair skidding backwards and her hip bumping the desk, knocking over the inkwell. Ignoring the black stain spreading across her papers, she rushed to the cottage door, feeling foolish even as she did. Already she was picturing his perplexed expression as she burst out into the garden searching for him, his laugh when she confessed that she had been worried. _“I carried a sword for long enough: you’d think you’d trust me as competent enough to use an axe,”_ she imagined him saying, even as she fumbled with the latch, panic rising like bile in her throat.

There was no warning. There had been no illness or pain, or at least none that he had ever confessed to her. He had put the axe down with care. That always stuck out in her memory, oddly enough. The axe perfectly balanced on top of the chopping block. He always complained about her laying it down in the wet grass. Then he must have managed a few steps towards the cottage and braced himself against the wall before collapsing. He had been trying to get back to her, she was certain of it. Had he called out? Had she been too absorbed in her writing to hear? Evelyn often tortured herself by wondering, not that she nor the greatest healer in Thedas could have saved him. But she wished he hadn’t been alone.

“Was it the lyrium? Was it the amount of lyrium he had taken as a templar? Or was it because he had taken lyrium and stopped?” she had asked the vastly underqualified surgeon over and over again as he bumbled and deferred, trying to get away from her.

“Impossible to make any firm…There can be no doubt it took a toll on his body but we can’t say for certain what, if indeed anything –”

“But do you think it was the _lyrium_?” Evelyn had insisted. The specifics didn’t matter. Of course they didn’t matter. But for a while she had wanted someone to blame and the entire chantry had seemed like a good place to start.

Evelyn wiped her filthy hand across her cheek, not caring about the streak of dirt it must have left on her skin and turned her head to glance towards the chopping block.

Why was she doing this to herself again? Thinking of such things? If anyone asked after her on any given day, she would readily answer that she was well, happy even. And she would truly mean it. Evelyn had more to be grateful for in life than most and she never forgot it. Yet every day it was a battle to not let her mind wander down such melancholy paths.

Had she slept badly? Evelyn couldn’t recall, but she felt so ruddy tired and emotional she was sure she must have. It had been harder to heave herself out of bed that morning than usual: all her limbs felt heavy and her head had ached. Perhaps this rain had put her in a mood. Now she was panting from even the briefest pass of weeding, while beads of perspiration formed on her forehead just from dragging the sack of manure out from the shed. But still she continued to work, throwing herself into separating the elfroot plants: stabbing determinedly at their tenacious root systems with a trowel and pulling free the individual plants. They had been left like this too long already and no one was going to get it done for her.

Finn worried every time he came to visit, watching her rooting about in the garden beds with vigour until dusk. The last time he stayed, he had come tearing out of the cottage, yelling frantic reprimands after he had glanced out a window and spotted her up a ladder in the orchard.

“What are you doing!?” he yelled as he reached her, bracing the three-step ladder.

“What in the name of the Maker is all the yelling about Finn? Is the cottage on fire? Is the sky falling in? Again?” Evelyn asked, climbing down.

“You can’t do this!” he told her, flailing his gangly arms ineffectually once she was safely on the ground.

“I just did,” Evelyn replied with a laugh, putting down the saw next to the branch she had pruned and resting her hand on her hip.

“It isn’t safe. You can’t saw and hold on to the ladder at the same time. One arm, remember?” he explained tersely, as if she were a misbehaving child. When had that happened, Evelyn had wondered. When had he grown up so much? “Father wouldn’t have liked it either,” Finn added, with an air of finality, picking up the ladder and moving it out of reach. Evelyn wasn’t bothered: she was done anyway.

“You always invoke your father believing he will grant you additional authority,” Evelyn told her son patiently, “But few things have given me more pleasure in life than vexing that man. He knew this _very_ well.”

“No wonder behind your back he always said you were so stubborn you must be part druffalo,” Finn muttered, then immediately looked horrified for having slipped. But delighted, Evelyn began to laugh, and couldn’t stop for a very long time.

A peculiar sensation came upon Evelyn even as she lost herself in her gardening. Her skin was prickling, the hairs standing up on her arms. She sensed the air pressure had changed, like when you can feel a storm coming before you can see or hear it. Wondering what had triggered this change, she rocked back from the overgrown elfroot she was wrestling with and scanned the area. Movement on the far side of the field caught her attention and she looked at it hard, squinting in the glare and unable to focus. Someone was there, right at the opposite fence line, and walking towards the cottage.

Evelyn didn’t get many unexpected visitors, and while it could be a villager seeking a potion, she felt a pang of suspicion. It was a man, strong and able-bodied, walking purposefully towards her, but not with any particular haste. She scanned the tree line for any glinting weapons in case he was a scout, sent first to lull her into a false sense of security and gauge her defenses before the rest of the bandits moved in. But there was nothing: he seemed truly alone.

She put down her trowel and shaded her eyes, trying to make him out. But it was impossible, and not just because of the sun. Truth be told her eyes weren’t what they used to be. And it was bright, so bright that the white glare of the sun seemed to be radiating off the man himself, dazing her briefly. When had it stopped raining? Staring at him made Evelyn’s head swim alarmingly and she tightly closed her eyes until tiny pricks of light danced behind the lids. She fell forward slightly, her palm making heavy contact with the soil, her chest feeling painfully tight as she struggled to take in air. Her entire body broke out in a cold sweat and she began to shiver uncontrollably. Was she panicking? Was _she_ panicking? The Herald of Andraste, The Inquisitor, saviour of Thedas and one of the most formidable mages of this era? She wasn’t afraid of _anything_ , not demons or Red Templars or dragons. And nor should she be. The only thing she had ever been truly afraid of had already happened and she had survived that too.

If her husband’s death hadn’t defeated Evelyn, there was nothing this stranger could do to hurt her.

The thought of Cullen calmed her and restored her resolve. Evelyn forced herself to take a slow breath through her nose and the pain that had been ricocheting through her body subsided almost instantly. In fact she felt refreshed, invigorated and more than ready to tell this trespassing idiot to get off her land and out of her bloody field before he trampled the pumpkin vines she had growing there.

She rose quickly, adrenaline making her movements smooth. Brushing off her knees, she contemplated fetching her staff from inside. It might make her appear more imposing, though she didn’t need it to cast. Deciding against it and wanting to keep the man in her sights, she strode to the garden fence and climbed over it in one effortless motion. Had she not been so distracted, she might have found it strange she was able to get herself over the fence at all, let alone easily. And if she had really thought about it, she might have found it stranger still that she had climbed over using _both_ her hands. But the thought did not occur to her, on a mission to confront the man as she was.

There was something familiar about him, she began to realise, as she got closer, though he was still so distant that she could not make out his features. Evelyn’s pulse began to race. Was it her son?

She could see the light catching a mop of sandy blonde hair and wide shoulders, just like his father’s. But her son was supposed to be in Lothering, designing a new building that was to become a primary infirmary for the region. Everyone had speculated that Finn would grow up to be a warrior of great prowess, given the military legacy of his parents. Evelyn had secretly wondered if he might be a mage too. But he was neither, and she and Cullen had never pushed him towards picking up a sword, though she did have fond memories of watching her husband and young son playfight in the garden. For a man who so openly despised the theatre, Cullen had a natural talent for performing his inevitable defeat, sometimes on one knee swearing fealty to the victor and sometimes acting out protracted death scenes that would make her and Finn laugh so hard they could barely catch breath. But Finn’s interest in chasing his father around the garden with a stick waned as he got older, though Cullen had insisted in teaching him basic self-defence, just as he had once insisted on teaching her.

As it was, Finn had inherited his parent’s more studious traits, Cullen’s perfectionism and her tenacious curiosity, to become an architect. An architect of all things! It would have been a massive understatement to say that she and Cullen were proud. Though Finn could have trapped nugs or swept floors for a living and they would have been happy.

And it made a certain kind of sense that after she and Cullen had fought so hard to save the world, their son was working to rebuild it, in the most literal sense.

But it wasn’t him, Evelyn realised, with disappointment and mounting confusion. The man was shorter and broader than her beanpole son, and Finn always slouched when he walked while this man kept his spine straight and chin confidently raised more like…Cullen. She stopped, and so did he. Evelyn hesitated, pulse fluttering at her throat. Had she finally slipped into senility? Or was it a demon? But this was nothing like the Fade. And Maker, if anyone knew the Fade it was her. It was too warm, too still, too…she turned back to look at her cottage, the garden, the orchard. But all of the familiar landmarks had disappeared and there was nothing. Nothing but the same grassy field stretching on and on into the distance behind her, all the colours of it vivid and radiant in the impossibly bright sunlight. Evelyn swallowed, more stunned than afraid or upset. It appeared that there was no turning back. She reflected on this briefly and found she didn’t mind. In fact, it felt like a relief.

The stranger was still there, waiting patiently for her. Evelyn knew who it was now, or her heart did even while her mind struggled to comprehend. When he stretched a hand towards her, she began to walk again, more quickly than before, gaining speed, almost stumbling. Then she laughed, and throwing out her arms, broke into a run.

**Author's Note:**

> This is BY FAR the sappiest thing I have ever written and goodness knows I have written a lot of sappy things. 
> 
> This was the original ending I wrote for ‘Amidst It All’, drafted long before the first chapter was ever posted here. I decided to rewrite it not because I thought this was too sad (it isn't meant to be) but because I wanted to leave Evelyn & Cullen at the conclusion of that fic with a new beginning and a bit of ambiguity rather than a very definite ending. I have been scavenging through my ‘rejected Amidst ideas’ doc and wanted to polish this up and post.
> 
> I'm genuinely unsure if anyone will want to click this fic but thank you so much for reading if you have made it here. You're an absolutely wonderful, brave soul. <3


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